Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1887-04-11

and at the door of the tomb
we leave the cloak of flesh and the wrap
pings with which we meet the storms of
this world. At the close Of an earthly
reception, under the brush and broom of
the porter the coat or hat may be handed
to US better than when we resigned it,
and the cloak of humanity will finally be
returned to US improved and frightened
and purified and glorifed.
You and do not want our bodies re-
turned as they are now. We want to get
rid of all their weaknesses and all their
susceptibllities to fatigue and all their
slowness OF locomotion. They will be
put through chemistry of soil and heat
and cold and changing seasons out of
which God will reconstruct them as much
better than they are now as the
body of the rosiest and healthiest
child that bounds over the lawn
at Prospect Park is better than
the sickest patient in Bellevue Hospital.
But as to our soul, we will cross right
over, not waiting for obsequies, indepen-
dent of obituary, into a state in every
way better, with wider room and veloci-
ties beyond computation; the dullest of
Us into companionship with the very best
spirits in their very best mood, in the
very parlor of the universe, the four walls
FURNISHED and paneled and pictured and
glorifed with all the splendors that the
infinite God in all the ages has been able
to invent. Victory!
This view of course makes of but little
importance whether we are cremated or
sepultureG. If the latter is dust to dust,
the former is ashes to ashes. II any pre-
fer incarceration let them have it without
Caricature. The world may become so
crowded that cremation may be univeT-
sally adopted by law as well as by general
consent. Many of the mightiest and best
spirits have gone through this process.
Thousands and tens of thousands of Gods
children have been Cremated-P. P.
Bliss and wife, the eVangelistic singers,
Cremated by accident at Ashtabula
bridge; John Rodgers, Cremated by perse-
Cution; Latimer and Ridley, Cremated at
Oxford; POthinus and Blandins, slave,
and Alexander, a physician, and their
comrades, cremated at the order of Mar
Gus AureliuS-at least @ hundred thOus-
and of Christ's diciples cremated, and
there can be no doubt sbout the resurreC-
ton of their bodies. If the world lasts
as much longer as it has already been
built, there perhaps may be no room for
the large acreage set apart for the resting
places, but that time has not come.
Plenty of room yet, and the race need not
pass that bridge Of ire until it comes to
it. The most of US prefer the old way.
But whether out of natural disintegratiOn
or cremation we shall get that luminous,
buOyant, gladstone, transcendent, magnlti-
cent, inexplicable structure called the
resurrection body, you will have it,
l will have it. l say to you to-
day, as Paul said to Agrippa: "Why
should it be thought thing incredible
with you, that God shout raise the dead?"
The far-up cloud, higher than the hawk
flies, higher that the eagle flies, what is it
made of? Drops of water from the Hud
son, other drops from the East river,
other drops from a stagnant pool out on
Newark fats-up yonder there, embodied
in g cloud and the sun kindles il. If God
can make such a lustrOus cloud out of
water drops, many Of them soiled and
impure and fetched from miles away, can
He not transport the fragments of hui
man body from the earth and out of them
build radiant body? Can not God, who
owns all the material out of which bones
and muscle and flesh are made, set them
-
facturer of telescopes drops q telescope
on the floor and it breaks, can he not
mend it again so you can see through it?
And if God drops the human eye into the
dust, the eye which He originally fash
toned, can He not restore it? Aye, II the
manufacturer of the telescope by q
change of the glass and a change of focus
can make better glass than that which
llyJ
improve it, do you not think the fash
Toner of the human eve msy improve its
sight and multiply the natural eye by the
thOusandfold additional forces of the res
direction eye?
"Why should it be thought with You an
incredible thing that God should raise the
dead?" Things all around us suggest it.
Out of what grew all these flowers? Out
of the mould and the e0rth. Resurrected!
Resurreeted The radiant butterfly,
where did it come from? The loathsOme
caterpillar. That aibatrOs that smites
the tempest with its wing, where did it
come from? a senseless shell. Near
BeIgerac, France, in g Celtic tomb under
a block were found flower seed that had
been buried 1000 years. The explorer
took the flower seed and planted it,
and it came up; it bloOmed IN
bluebeu and heliotrope. Two thousand
years ago buried yet resurrected. A
traveller says he found in mummy-pit
in Egypt garden peas that had been
buried there three Thousand years ago.
He brouc hit them out and on the 4th of
June, 1884, he planted them, and in thirty
days they sprang up. Buried three thou
sand years, yet resurrected. "Why should
it be thought thing incredible with you
that God should raise the dead?"
Where did all this silk come frCm-the
silk that aderns your persons and your
homes? In the hollow of a staff Greek
missionary brought from China to Europe
the progenitors of those worms that now
supply the silk markets of many nations.
The pageantry of hammered host and the
luxurious articles of commercial en-
porium blazing out from the silk worms.
And who shall be surprised if out of this
insignificant earthly body, this insignii-
cant earthly life, our bodies unfold into
something worthy of the coming eterni-
ties? Put silver into diluted nitre and it
dissolves. Is the silver gone forever?
No. Pit in some pieces of copper and